1. Was Peter flogged publicly by his father for dressing as a woman, for disrespecting Deborah's virginal sanctity, or a bit of both? If it's the first, what's so bad about dressing as a woman? What does this say about the male role in Cranford? Is it better, held to more prestige? We've seen that women are allowed to wear hats, as are men. It seems fishy.
Also, this is the image I mentioned today in class:
https://images.nonexiste.net/popular/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/I-m-not-ashamed-to-dress-like-a-woman.jpeg
(So, it was Iggy Pop, not the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Oops!)
2. Is the male role within Cranford defined by everything that women are not, mainly being vulgar?
Iggy Pop is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI honestly have a kind of different, kind of the same idea when it comes to the male role in Cranford. It seems to me like all the men are dying. No, seriously. It seems this way to me because wasn't Captain Brown "manly"? And he died. And now there's Peter, whose father beat him into submission with a phallic symbol; so Peter goes off and joins the Navy and becomes "manly." It seems the only men who are allowed to stay in Cranford are the more "feminine" ones, like Mrs. Jamieson's servant who screams threats through a top-story window at the alleged robbers in an attempt to "protect" the ladies. So, I think the male role within Cranford is defined by femininity...or at least those male roles that are allowed to survive. Cranford is seriously like "The Hunger Games" when it comes to male survival.
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